On January 4, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the people of Manipur that he knew the “pain in your hearts” and that after 2014, he had brought “the entire Government of India to your doorstep.” More than two years after an ethnic violence erupted in the state on May 3, 2023, he has finally returned. But the Manipur he visits today is no longer the one he once invoked. It is a house of mourning, fractured on his government’s watch.The design of Modi’s visit itself reflects that fracture. According to the Press Information Bureau (PIB) itinerary, he will meet the Kuki-Zo community in the hills of Churachandpur, and separately the Meitei community in Imphal. The segregated schedule is a powerful admission of failure: the gulf between the two communities has become so wide that even the prime minister cannot bring them into the same umbrella. The visit underscores Manipur’s de facto partition.Even the secrecy surrounding the trip signaled unease. Under President’s Rule, the administration referred only to a “VVIP visit”, revealing Modi’s name at the last moment. Then, on the eve of September 11, posters and decorations of his visit were set ablaze in Churachandpur. The message was clear: Manipur is not celebrating, it is grieving.The BJP’s claim of a “double engine sarkar”, centre and state in harmony, has only meant double silence for Manipur. When violence broke out in May 2023, Police were widely seen as partisan, and mobs on both sides acted with impunity. In the first week alone, at least 50 people were killed.Delhi remained silent. It took 80 days, and the viral circulation of a video showing two Kuki women stripped and paraded, for the Prime Minister to speak. On July 20, 2023, he said his heart was “filled with sorrow and anger” and that what happened to the “daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven.” Later, he promised in Parliament that “peace will definitely prevail.But the killings continued. By July 2024, the official toll had reached 221. Today, it has crossed 260. Biren Singh eventually resigned on February 9, 2025, and four days later, the state was placed under President’s Rule.The Union government has since claimed that violence has decreased, while militant groups continued to occupy abandoned homes and property. Camps of betrayed promisesOver 60,000 people remain displaced across Manipur. Relief camps, which the government once promised would be temporary, have become prisons of despair. Families live in stinking halls, separated by worn-out curtains, sharing just a handful of toilets.When Union home minister Amit Shah visited in June 2023, he promised healthcare, housing and education. Two years later, those promises remain unfulfilled. Kuki organisations reported 35 deaths by August 2023 due to lack of medicines, and at least 13 more since late 2024. Private hospitals have threatened to halt dialysis under the government’s PMJAY scheme because dues remain unpaid.Despite repeated assurances, most displaced families cannot return to their villages. Suicides in Meitei camps highlight the despair: men unable to provide for their families took their own lives. Education too has collapsed. Kuki children once studying in Imphal can no longer return.The questions PM must answerModi’s long-delayed visit will be remembered less for its announcements than for the questions it leaves unanswered.Why did it take 865 days for the Prime Minister to step into a state burning with violence?Why are over 60,000 people still trapped in camps despite repeated promises of rehabilitation?Can development succeed when the justice system has collapsed so completely that trials must be shifted outside the state?And is this visit the tacit acceptance that Manipur now exists as a permanently divided land?Manipur has not asked for parades or photo opportunities. Its people have asked for dignity, justice, and peace. After nearly two and a half years of silence, the prime minister’s visit does little to convince them that those demands will finally be met.